51–60 of 84 posts
> Romance scams cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As people grow increasingly isolated “People” is accurate but this is largely a male dominated issue. Men are targeted at higher rates and fall for these scams at much higher rates. Men need to be taught that random unknown women will largely not message them at random for sex. It’s almost always a scam. These scammers are playing on the psychology…
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I think it's more dangerous as a parasocial playground. You think you are making friends, but in fact it's a poor substitute and doesn't carry the risks/benefits of proper bonding with another human. This is independent of whether the other person is a bot or their communication is curated by an algorithm.
Can you say more about those risks and benefits?
Benefits - IRL human companionship.
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That's already here for me, and others I believe as the most interesting communication has moved to group chats. The open web is for advertising, and the best LLMs will be for information retrieval.
I'm a bit doubtful. You're seeing my words... do you have data on the transitive trust path between you and I? In the world I'm describing your browser wouldn't render this text unless it had confirmed that path decided that it was acceptable.
> Romance scams cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As people grow increasingly isolated “People” is accurate but this is largely a male dominated issue. Men are targeted at higher rates and fall for these scams at much higher rates. Men need to be taught that random unknown women will largely not message them at random for sex. It’s almost always a scam. These scammers are playing on the psychology…
Overall I don't think he ever got scammed with us banging all that into his head while my close friends' father has been scammed numerous times. They had to take away his bank account access after learning of him being scammed. They did so cause they know he still would continue to talk & give money to these totally fake ...beautiful young people who said they loved him.
Personally i think it's best to treat everyone on the internet as scammer until they have proven else-wise. On dating apps I will ask to see if they want to do a video chat or set up a date in a few days or more once we've connected conversationally. If they don't they are a suspect scammer to me and I move onto the next (flat out then tell them i think u might be a scammer ..i am not and want to show you i am genuine looking for a real relationship). Tho video chat soon-ish via deepfakes won't be able to be trusted. I saw a Chinese nationalist try to deepfake ID.me (IRS's authentication system). Thus in person in a few days to less then two weeks to meet for a date is best to ensure real or forget it!
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I don't get how or why it seems to have gotten worse in the last 20-25 years. I was a very online teenager at the end of the 90s and I have formed friendships that last to this day. Or at least staying in touch. And it's not just me, it's the same for a lot of people I got to know offline who have different such circles. Maybe because it was just a smaller circle of people? Maybe because it was so not normal that peo…
I'm also a little confused, because I remember such common empathy-lacking rhetoric like demanding boob pics of any proclaimed female on the internet being common in my tween online years. Or sending shock stuff as a joke (2girls1cup, tubgirl etc). So its not like the internet didn't have troll-y cesspits. And yet somehow something has changed such that as a population we've been trained against forming human connect…
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Fascinating! Well if y'all haven't already, it would be great if you could publish a study of your findings; what you're describing is basically the exact opposite of what I expected based on other reporting.
Gentle reminder that news reporting is not a representative sample of, well, just about anything. It's highly selected and filtered through several layers. The same is true of a survey of internet posts, or online surveys btw. It's very hard to get representative samples.
This was the topic of an amazing podcast Scam Inc from the Economist https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc that I finished last week. It's subscriber only but absolutely worth it. Key points are: "Pig butchering" scams were developed and mastered by Chinese organized crime targeting chinese citizens first, before going worldwide. The crime is industrialized with call centers with thousands of people worki…
This was the topic of an amazing podcast Scam Inc from the Economist https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc that I finished last week. It's subscriber only but absolutely worth it. Key points are: "Pig butchering" scams were developed and mastered by Chinese organized crime targeting chinese citizens first, before going worldwide. The crime is industrialized with call centers with thousands of people worki…
If you have a loved one who is vulnerable:
+ Make it clear there is no shame in falling victim or seeking help
+ Teach them to "hang up and call back" anytime someone calls them and asks for money or passwords, personal data, etc. (This just saved her from a bank card scam)
Currently my worry is AI voice impersonation because my mom genuinely doesn't believe that AI can clone a voice. My plan is to have JFK call her and give her an impassioned speech about being aware of scams.
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possible reasons I can think of 1) these are based on self reporting and it’s very possible men report at lower rates. 2) it’s possible that the scams happen outside of the areas where I have insights (social media)
Also, the specific social media network you work at would skew your perspective. I would bet money that romance scam victims are overwhelmingly men on TikTok but overwhelmingly women on Facebook.
This was the topic of an amazing podcast Scam Inc from the Economist https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc that I finished last week. It's subscriber only but absolutely worth it. Key points are: "Pig butchering" scams were developed and mastered by Chinese organized crime targeting chinese citizens first, before going worldwide. The crime is industrialized with call centers with thousands of people worki…
Yep my mom got caught on one of these - paying to "save a vulnerable puppy" only for the dog to "have a medical crises during transport", etc. If you have a loved one who is vulnerable: + Make it clear there is no shame in falling victim or seeking help + Teach them to "hang up and call back" anytime someone calls them and asks for money or passwords, personal data, etc. (This just saved her from a bank card scam) Cu…
At some point in the decline still being libertarian is like handing out fliers for dictators.